January182015

“Edward Snowden has revealed how intelligence agencies around the world, led by the NSA, are doing their best to ensure a legal vacuum in the Internet. In a recent interview with the US public broadcaster PBS, the whistleblower voiced his concerns that "defense is becoming less of a priority than offense."”

January042015

“The European ideals of the Enlightenment, of secularization, of tolerance and the rights of the individual seem to fall into oblivion more and more in Europe. They are presently being defended in the most honest way not in Berlin or Paris but in Tehran. It is young women in head scarves who are fighting against a religious-fundamentalist regime, young people who shout "Allahu akbar," Allah is great, and risk their lives fighting despotism. They are the proof that enlightenment and human rights, tolerance and freedom of religion, must be universally valid, for believers and non-believers, Muslims or Christians, Jews or atheists. This we should remember in Europe.”

December282014

December172014

18:00

“

But as final negotiations on the EU’s Anti Money Laundering Directive are set to conclude this evening, it appears the resolve of European policymakers to pass what is seen to be a crucial new anti-corruption tool is weakening.

A leaked draft compromise agreement passed to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows that the directive may fall short of making registers completely public.

Instead, according to the draft: “Member States may restrict the use of data obtained …to the purposes connected with a legitimate public interest under the EU or national law, such as the fight against money laundering or terrorist financing or associated predicate offences.”